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⢇ CHAPTER 10 : UPWARD MOBILITY : PULLMAN PORTERS, A. PHILIP RANDOLPH, AND POLITICAL CHANGE The same year Joe Louis leveled James Braddock to win a world championship, an unspectacular group of men, known more for their deference than for their power or political prowess, won a victory of no less historic proportions. The 1937 contract between the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Pullman Company was the first ever signed by a black union in the United States. With that contract, railroad porters became the most politically powerful group of African Americans in the country, at a time when they still made their living by serving white people. When George Mortimer Pullman began hiring former slaves as railway workers, he insisted that his porters be literate. Their first task was to read the 217-rule employee manual, including instructions on how to cut hair and how to pour an Old Fashioned Kentucky Colonel Mint Julep. But their fundamental obligation was to maintain the wall of racial separation between themselves and their customers. Although porters wore uniforms that clearly identified them, the uniforms were unnecessary. Never would a passenger be mistaken for a porter so long as passengers were white and the porters black, and the Pullman Company hired the darkest men they could find. A company directive insisted, “Do not hire a light complexioned man.”1 George Pullman hired the first porter for his sleeping cars in 1867. By 1870 porters had become essential to the Pullman experience, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the Pullman Company was largest employer of African Americans in the United States. Pullman’s criteria were clear: porters were to be between twenty-five and forty years of age, and no shorter than five-footseven but not taller than six-foot-one so they could easily walk through the cars. Although Pullman at first required only literacy, soon the company was demanding a grammar school education, and by the 1920s the Pullman Company hired only high school graduates. Some applicants received home visits, in which interviewers questioned family and neighbors about the character and moral stability of potential porters. Many were turned down because they were too light-skinned. Porters could not have sideburns or mustaches and U P WA R D M O B I L I T Y 161 had to wear one of two uniforms at all times: a black cap and blue jacket for receiving or discharging passengers and a white coat for making beds. Black trousers, white shirts, and black shoes completed the uniform, although when not on duty, porters were permitted to change into slippers. To be hired, a porter needed at least $15 to buy a uniform and a cap. Mobility and Exploitation The Pullman Company leased its cars to railway carriers, for which they served as hotel rooms on wheels. The Pullman sleeper became an American institution, not just a novel experience but for many travelers a luxurious one as well—as E. B. White described it, a “perfect thing, perfect in conception and execution, this small green hole in the dark moving night, this soft warren in a hard world.” Part of the mystique of taking a Pullman sleeper was the chance to live as the wealthy do, for just one night—the chance to be served. At their most successful, the Pullman cars accommodated over 100,000 people a night, more than all the nation’s top-flight hotels combined. And, as White observed, the Pullman had an advantage over a hotel room: “A hotel room can sometimes be depressing it stands so still.”2 From the turn of the century onward, the country had become more and more segregated, and a job as a Pullman porter was one of very few that offered a black man the prospect of advancing into the middle class. Even government jobs, which had been available to African Americans, were segregated . Postal jobs had once been highly prized, but when President Woodrow Wilson’s postmaster general, Albert Burleson, resegregated the post office in 1913, Negroes who had held front office jobs found themselves sorting and delivering mail, and many Southern postal workers lost their jobs altogether. African American doctors, lawyers, and judges combined numbered only half as many as the Pullman porters. Although porters worked as menial servants for white railway customers, within their home communities they were respected members of society. They wore starched uniforms and worked indoors. Furthermore, they traveled the country, which...

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